WebDAV Client

[Remy Maucherat <re...@apache.org>]

>       A bad thing happened today; I started thinking.  I thought up
> another requirement for a WebDAV client: an Ant client!

I almost fell off my chair when I read that ;-)

>       Ant has a task that interacts with CVS, but it occurs to me that
> a much more general task would be a DAV task, so that Ant could get
> and put stuff into any DAV-compliant repository.
>
>       And then I started thinking about that some more, and I realized
> that an Ant DAV task would satisfy another need that was lingering
> around in the back of my brain: the ability to replicate content from
> the repository onto a production web server.  Where I work, for
> example, we don't want to get stuff directly from the repository
> because:
>
> - it's slower than letting the web server get it from the file system;
> - we want a really secure, read-only production web server; and
> - we may want to make some changes as stuff goes from "development" to
> "production" (e.g. all the e-mail links to tester1@mycompany.com now
> go to webmaster@mycompany.com).
>
>      So with a combination of Ant and a DAV client, I can replicate
> sites out of a development repository onto my production server!
> That's neat!

Ok, I get the point. It's something like the "cvs" task. Very convenient
indeed.
I think it will be easy to write with the DAV client library.

>      I'd really like to help out more with Slide (as you might have
> guessed, I have a lot of enthusiasm for its potential).
>
>      I've been spouting off about all the neat things that one can do
> with DAV Clients, and since I was fiddling with a PROPFIND/PROPPATCH
> client anyway, I thought I would volunteer to work on finishing the
> webdav.client packages.  I make that offer a bit cautiously, though,
> as I've never participated in any open source project before, and will
> probably prove ignorant about some pretty basic stuff.

Cool ! I'm working of the client basic functionality right now (GET should
be done). I'm doing OPTIONS, PUT, HEAD later today.

>      But I'm offering to help if you need it; I only see your name
> beside tasks in the status.html, and if you're willing to put up with
> me, I'm willing.

That's great news :-) I've added you to the client library section.

Remy